Page 4 of Ensnaring the Siren

“Far better uses for that one,” Serpenra signed, a sly, suggestive smirk twisting her thin lips, bloodred from feasting. While her magenta scales were muted with age, she was one of their most clever hunters, and Nireed wouldn’t leave her alone with a Surface Dweller male for anything. “He seemed quite taken with you. A shame you didn’t make use of…”

“Leave it.” Nireed slapped her hands together. There’d only been fear, nothing more to explain his body’s reaction. “He’s gone, and we’ve food to tow home.”

Serpenra pouted. “You’re no fun.”

“Still don’t understand why we let him go.”

Grabbing the mouthy male by the scruff of his hair, Nireed yanked him toward the column of fuel and refuse belching from the sinking boat, shoving his face near its noxious plume. “You see that?” She held firm as Cyrus wriggled, using one hand to sign. “This is why we don’t sink Surface Dweller vessels. When you have enough forethought to consider that and are not ruled by blind vengeance, I’ll listen to your opinions. Until then, keep your mouth shut and don’t presume I care whether you understand my decisions or not.”

Pushing him away, Nireed took two of the eight rope leads they’d tethered around the lifeless fishermen. While their kind didn’t actively hunt Surface Dwellers anymore, these men had tried to kill them, and meat was meat. To waste it was a grave offense, especially after so much destruction.

Casting one last helpless glance toward the mass of netting, Nireed pulled her catch into the deep, the others following behind with theirs. Her friends on shore would shudder at the sight, would beg her to find some other way to feed the pod.

But something good had to come out of this night.

Their people were hungry. And the flesh of their enemies would fill their bellies for now.

Chapter

Three

Hours of combing dark water and they never found the other three fishermen, alive or dead.

Pulling cruelly at the short, dark auburn curls on top of his head, Reid stared at his computer screen and the case report he’d been trying and failing to fill out for the last hour. It should’ve been easy. Just write down the facts.

No bodies recovered. All eight fishermen were presumed dead, and their boat lost at sea.

But he’d only typed three words.

Engaged a mermaid.

His cursor blinked back at him tauntingly.

What was he supposed to say about that? That while she’d annihilated the fishermen, she’d not only allowed him to leave unscathed, but had literally clipped him back into the hoist and sent him on his merry way?

Then there was her claim, if it could be believed, that the deceased fishermen were hunting and killing her kind. And for what—food, trophies, or some black market thing? What was he supposed to do about that?

This wasn’t exactly a fisheries problem, although the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration probably had something to say about it. The mermaids evidently had language and sapience, and that technically made them people. Just not entirely human.

According to the scientific articles he’d read, interspecies breeding made them biologically part human, but what did you call the part that wasn’t? Pelagic? Extraterrestrial? With how much ocean remained unexplored—more than eighty percent was the last number he’d read—the ocean and its creatures might as well be as alien as space. So, what in the deep-sea hell had mermaids looked like before getting with humans? Did those creatures even still exist? The scientist who’d discovered the species seemed to think they probably did, although one had never been sighted.

He shuddered. God help them if one ever was.

Whatever degree of “humanness” the Gulf of Maine mermaids had, people were people, which brought him to one needling question: was this an international incident? Did a legal, political framework even exist yet for how to handle something like this? To his knowledge, merfolk were a recognized community but not a nation.

Oversimplify this report and the mermaids might be painted as hostile. Go into too much detail and supposition and the mermaids might not only be painted as hostile but also as a threat to national security.

This was leagues above his pay grade.

“Case report giving you trouble?” Perez plopped down in the chair next to him, crossing a black-booted foot over her knee, and lacing her hands over her stomach, skin a bronzy brown. She’d swapped over from an olive drab flight suit to utility blues, her dark brown hair pulled back into a tight, low bun. Two years ago, NPR had done a feature on her as one of the Coast Guard’s few Latina pilots.

“I’m probably overthinking it.” He pushed back from the desk with a huff, folding his arms behind his head.

“It’s not every day you meet a mermaid.”

“Yeah, well, I’m getting a real bad feeling this is going to be a repeat thing.”

Perez cocked her head. “Why’s that?”